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Wednesday, September 7, 2016

Book Reaction: Wheeling by Reed A Booke

WHAT: This book reaction is from a newly developed Communication Circle supporting individuals who use Augmentative and Alternative Communication (AAC). The group responded to the Tarheel Reader book Wheeling by Reed A Booke.

NOTE: This book is rated C for Caution, so be sure to change the rating to 'Any Rating'. Then type in the title, Wheeling, and it will show up!

WHERE: Courtney's Place is a day center for adults with disabilities. It has a great location in Scottsdale, AZ, and a very active calendar, The staff was very supportive in starting a Communication Circle.

WHO: Today's circle included three young adults who use AAC via direct selection, eye gaze, and auditory scanning with 2 switches. Two individuals use Unity software on a Prentke Romich device and one uses Touch Chat on an iPad. Two speaking young adults also participated, helping to provide verbal models.

HOW: 1) First we started by showing a 'Tic Tac Talk; (from Musselwhite's Communication Circle CD). The sample vocabulary set includes 8 comments. We tried to find these or similar comments on each student's communication system. For example, one young woman has VERY GOOD instead of GREAT. Another chose to use AWESOME instead of GREAT. We practiced these words for about 5 minutes.

2) Next, we used a cube with Post-Its such as Feelings, Positive Comments, Describing Words, Colors, etc. When we rolled the cube, each person had to find a word on the communication system to match that category. Speaking partners helped call out ideas for their peers. For example, when we rolled 'Describing Words' one woman called out "pretty" and all device users found that word on their system.

3) Next, we read the book Wheeling. I paused often to see if the adults wanted to call out responses. Below are some of their comments. You can see that there was a big mix of positive and negative comments, descriptions, and feelings among the group, and they were very excited to participate!
I used the PicCollage app to visually share their responses to three of the pages.